site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Now I suspect that the president of a university black student alliance is getting an education in something extremely low value

Couldn’t resist booing the out group?

Presidents of student alliances and other campus activism are often self-selecting for people wanting to go into politics, so they're building up contacts, networking, experience, etc. before moving on to joining a political party as part of the organisers.

See, for an Irish example, Ivana Bacik - moved from student activism in Trinity College to setting up a nice middle-class professional career and is now leader of the Irish Labour Party. And that was my impression of the Students' Union set back when I was doing a technical training course at the dawn of time in a local 'college'.

Rigorous majors generally don’t head up campus organizations.

Rigor and value aren't synonymous. I would guess that the head of the university black student alliance is getting a valuable education, at least for them, regardless of what I think of whatever their major is.

It literally doesn’t matter whether it’s statistically true, (though, yes, it’d be nice to see you at least verify your sneers are accurate).

Sticking a “and also he’s probably fat” at the end of a paragraph is clearly intended to be insulting, not to advance your thesis, and “it’s okay that I said that, since most Americans are overweight” is not a defense.

As ZorbaTHut has recently reiterated the first rule is

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

She's majoring in Kinesiology according to LinkedIn. No idea if that's rigorous or not.